While the fiddle player sawed off the dizzy opening notes of Bob Wills’ “Take Me Back to Tulsa” on the stage in the back room, Charles Blagg was browsing the refreshments cooler up near the checkout counter. It was a rainy Saturday night in April, and in a few hours, Blagg — 78, with a white Stetson to match his mustache — would be driving not quite to Tulsa but to his home outside Nowata, Oklahoma, about 110 miles south. He’s made the four-hour round trip to The Mildred Store several times over the past few years. The century-old general store hosts a country music dance on the third Saturday of each month that regularly draws hundreds from across the region to this southeast Kansas town of 17. … In the dance hall, surrounded by Wrangler-clad farmers two-stepping underneath a wagon-wheel chandelier, these Saturday-night shindigs feel like some long tradition here in Mildred. In fact, they’re a relatively new development. Regena and Loren Lance started hosting the shows shortly after they bought Charlie Brown’s Grocery nine years ago.
Source: The Kansas City Star